This article is about the gradual and fractious establishment of a common approach to translating Ancient Greek poetry in the Early Modern period. Specifically, it considers the verse translations of sixteenth century printer and philologist, Henri Estienne, setting them in their context and exploring the impact they had on the translators in his orbit – in this case Bonaventura Vulcanius and Nicodemus Frischlin, rival translators of the hymns of Callimachus. Among Estienne’s strong convictions about translation was that verse translation should be firmly and clearly separated from creative imitation: the translator has a duty to make the translation respond closely to the original. This is an approach marked by laboriously philological rigour, with the peculiar corollary (explored by Estienne) that it would be easier to translate Latin verse into Greek. Shaped by this view but also by a competitiveness expressed increasingly in nationalist terms, the Callimachus translations consciously position themselves in relation to each other as well as to an earlier pioneer, the Florentine scholar and poet Angelo Poliziano.